The rants and raves of a teenage cinephile who is just a little bit obsessed with Catherine O'Hara and Hayao Miyazaki.

Friday, September 10, 2010

Catherine O'Hara Filmography: Rock and Rule (1983)

One of the largest facets of Catherine O'Hara's career is her work as a voiceover actress. And, as a lover of animation, I was looking forward to watching the Canadian cult classic "Rock and Rule", a movie that had a nightmarish release and has only recently been able to find an audience.

"Rock and Rule" is a trippy movie that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world in which humans have been replaced by highly evolved humanoid rats and society is evidently based greatly on rock and roll music. The evil, yet highly famous Mok (Don Francks) is searching for the right voice that will become the key to unlocking a demon from another dimension. He finds this voice in Angel (Susan Roman), the singer in a struggling band. When she is kidnapped, it's up to her hotheaded bandmate Omar (Paul LeMat) and the other members of her band to save her.

Overall, "Rock and Rule" is a pretty cool movie, besides having horrendous dialogue. The animation is cool to look at, exuding vibes of Ralph Bakshi and even Sylvain Chomet. There are some particularly stunning sequences, such as the demon summoning at the end. It also has a great soundtrack of songs from classic 80's bands like Cheap Trick, Earth Wind and Fire, Iggy Pop, and others. It's animation for adults for sure, and it works pretty well.

There's not much to say regarding Catherine's work in the movie, because her voice appears only in one scene as "Aunt Edith", the owner of a tattoo parlor that the band stays in while trying to save Angel. She does great voice work, or at least, as much as she could given the smallness of the role, all with a really funny New Jersey accent. Great voiceover work!

So that's about it on "Rock and Rule". I'd recommend it for sure, just as something different from your typical animated fare. OH, and Susan Roman, the voice of Angel, played Sailor Jupiter on the old "Sailor Moon" TV series. Which I watched. So when I heard her voice, it awakened something within me from my childhood. Haha. Funny stuff.

The Movie: 7/10Catherine: too small of a part to "rate". hahaBest in Show: The musical performers!